Vegetable & Lentil Soup

This soup takes less than 10 mins to prepare and cooks within 25mins. I know there is a temptation to make soup when the vegetables are looking a little past it but try not to. You want to get the optimum nutrition from them so use them while they are as fresh as possible.

This soup is easy, warming, filling,wholesome and tasty. No secret tips here - its just soup. Make it, enjoy it, be full, dont snack in the afternoon and get skinny along the way. Simple!!!!

As the people at Nike say -"Just Do It". Stop buying over priced soups in nice fancy packaging. They have hidden calories and are usually high in salt. Spend your money on nice fresh local or organic veggies, knock up this soup and enjoy for lunch.

This soup has no celery. Almost every soup recipe has celery - I dont really like celery so I leave it out. Also if you are making soup I like to have a higher ratio of carrot as it gives a nice hint of sweetness to the soup. Don't include brocolli in a vegetable soup - it gives an undesirable bitter taste.

This recipe includes half a potato - if you would like an even skinnier version leave out the potato and just include the lentils which are high in fibre and so filling.

Ingredients

Serves 2

few spritz's spray oil

2 large carrots

1/2 onion

1 baby leek

1/2 potato

4 tbsp red lentils

4 tbsp chicken stock concentrate / 1 chicken stock cube

500ml water

2 tsp weight watcher cream

Method

1. Prepare the vegetables. Peel the carrots and potatoes. Peel and dice the onion. Wash the leek and finely slice using about 3/4 of the leek.
2. Spritz a large saucepan with spray oil and put on a high heat. Add in the onion, potato, leek and carrots. Turn the heat down to a medium heat and allow the vegetables to sweat off for about 5mins.
3. Stir in the lentils and pour in the stock. Turn back up to a high heat and bring it to the boil. Then turn down and simmer for 25mins.
4. Puree down the soup -season with a little salt & pepper. 
5. Pour into a bowl and serve with a little dollop of weight watcher cream & chives.
6. Enjoy with a slice of McCambridges wholewheat bread.

Spicy Carrot Soup

I have adapted this recipe from this months Good Food Magazine. The basic concept is similar however the additional flavours added before serving take this soup to a whole new level of taste. As we are only using a very small quantity of reduced fat coconut milk  this keeps the calorie content low.  As an alternative some natural yoghurt of low fat/slim line milk would work fine too. This is a great tasty lunch time soup or indulge a little and have this as a main meal with some wholemeal brown bread and Mossfield Organic cumin seed cheese (a little goes a long way). Amazing.

Serves 2

Ingredients

4 large spring onions

1 clove garlic

4 large carrots

1/2 red pepper (sweet preferably)

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp coriander

1 chicken or vegetable stock cube

400ml boiling water

75mls low fat coconut milk

juice 1/4 lime

1 tsp brown sugar

Spray oil

1 tsp weight watcher cream

1 tsp spicy tomato relish ( ballymaloe jalapeno is a good shop bought choice)

Method

1. Slice the spring onions finely. De seed and dice the 1/2 red pepper. Peel, top and tail the carrots and cut into thin rings. Peel and dice the clove of garlic.
2. Spritz a small hot saucepan with some spray oil. Add in the spring onion, garlic and red pepper and cook for about 5 mins. Then add in the carrot and spices. Cook for another minute.
3. Pour in the hot stock - turn back up the heat to full and bring the soup mixture to the boil. 
4. When it has reached the boil turn down and allow to simmer (gently bubble) for about 45 mins. You may need to add more boiling water as they soup cooks. About 100mls.
5. Season with a little salt and black pepper. Allow to cool down a little, stir in the lime juice, coconut milk and sugar, then puree. 
6. Reheat and serve ( it does tend to taste better the next day when the flavours have developed a little)
7. To serve - ladle the soup into a bowl. Top with a 1/2 tsp of cream and spicy tomato relish.
8. Stir through and savour the gentle warmth and heat from the spices which is set off by a subtle sweetness. Delicious.